When scientists go out looking for research funding, it helps if their projects aren’t all that exciting. Excitement usually goes with the most speculative, cutting-edge science, but funding agencies usually prefer to put their money on projects that seem likely to bear fruit. “You pretty much have to demonstrate that you’ve already done half the work to demonstrate it’s feasible,” says Lucianne Walkowicz, a postdoctoral fellow in astrophysics based at Princeton University.

By that standard, Walkowicz’s latest project shouldn’t be getting any funding at all. She wants to conduct a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), not by doing anything so conventional as listening for radio transmissions á la Jodie Foster in Contact, or watching for flashes of laser light. Instead, she wants to see if ET’s are somehow manipulating the light coming from their stars so that they wink at us — a long shot if ever there was one, especially since she has no clue how they might go about it.

But thanks to a program titled “New Frontiers in Astronomy and Cosmology,” funded by the John Templeton foundation and administered by the University of Chicago, Walkowicz is getting her chance. Cutting-edge research is what this program is all about, and the question “Are We Alone in the Universe?” is one of the major areas it aims to address.

The odds of a discovery with Walkowicz’s project may be long, but the search technique is quite straightforward. “Our premise,” she says, “is that up until now, we’ve had a preconceived idea of what a SETI signal would look like.” It would basically be the sort of signal we know how to create, and understandably so, since searching for a signal from some entirely unknown technology would be kind of difficult.

If aliens were so advanced that they could cause their star to appear to flicker, however, it wouldn’t matter how they did it, and it would be easy enough to see with existing technology. In fact, says Walkowicz, “our premise was, ‘what if we’ve already detected a signal but missed it because of our preconceptions.’”

So she and her co-investigators (including Princeton’s Edwin Turner, who recently suggested looking for alien cities on Pluto), proposed to look through a potential trove of signals: the archives from the Kepler mission, which has been scanning space since 2009 for stars that are winking because of orbiting planets passing in front of them. Kepler also sees stars that are winking because they have sunspots, or because they’re eclipsed by other stars, or because they brighten and dim naturally, all on heir own.

What Walkowicz and company will do is use software algorithms to look for unusual patterns of variability. “We’ll get all sorts of things we understand,” she says, “but we’ll also be looking for things that aren’t matched by well-known physical processes.”

Naturally, they’ll try at first to explain these unusual variations with conventional physics — and in fact, the discovery of new, natural types of stellar variation could be a valuable side benefit of the project. Big, wide-field surveys of the sky with instruments such as the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will inevitably uncover all sorts of unexpected phenomena, so Walkowicz’s work could pre-explain at least some of them.

Once she and her team have ruled out all of the plausible natural explanations for strange flickerings, however, they’ll be forced to consider the possibility that it really is ET calling. “What would lead us to say it really is an alien signal?” she asks. “I don’t know, but in my book, finding things you can’t explain is interesting no matter what it is. If we see ‘SOS, send water,’ in Morse code, that would be great.”

There will probably be a bit more ambiguity than that, she admits, and we may never know for certain that we’re seeing a deliberate signal. “You don’t want to invoke the strangest thing first,” says Walkowicz, “but we should think a little bit more outlandishly. If we’re always succeeding all the time, maybe we’re not trying hard enough.”

hi this is billly im 10 years old and i dont know much about space im just in fith grade but i think work by michcal d lemonick is great i learned alot its awesome so if you could i have g-mail so e-mail me if you want my name is dirtbikebilly3311@gmail.com

I guess this represents progress. A thousand years ago, if people saw something they couldn't explain, they'd chalk it up to God. Now the preferred explanation is space aliens. Maybe in another thousand years we'll get to the point of honesty and just admit "nobody knows — yet".

I think aliens do exists and they must be extremely advanced as well.Earth with its primitive leaders,weaponry,education system and an utterly dishonest citizenly one must wonder how earth has made this far without getting invaded by alien lifeforms.

My first theory about why an invasion of earth has not happened is that maybe there is a superior race of aliens protecting earth and other aliens wishing to invade earth know this and therefore keep away or else their faces get smashed.

My second theory is that maybe the aliens fight among themselves for earth either in their time or ours or even here on earth currently but none has quite overpowered the others to have earth therefore earth has never gone to any of the fighting alien civilizations.

My third theory is that earth is reliably hidden from the sights of the aliens that even them cannot make it here and those that do,do not make it back home or have no idea where they are.

My fourth theory is that aliens aren't that clever and need an invasion by humans to heal them of their ignorance.

My fifth theory is that maybe man became alien and thus there are no aliens left to look for.

My sixth theory is that maybe there is something superiorly weird(i.e disease,air,soil,spirit) that keeps aliens away.

My last theory is that maybe there is nothing to gain for aliens in invading earth so no alien has any interest visiting earth.

Ms. Walkowicz, good luck on your research. Many wish that they had funding from deep wells to do research on suspicions. Perhaps your team could start by determining whether Earth is sending flickering light signals somehow which might appear to "wink" at deep space !!!! Maybe, what you are seeing is extraterrestial intelligence responding back to our winks. That would truly be extraterrestial LOVE !!

This is old news. Folks have been talking about aliens causing noticeable disruptions in their primaries light for decades. Several of the recently discovered rogue exoplanets were discovered using the same techniques that would be used to look for stars that have dyson arrays built around them.

Scientists long ago gave the nod to science thinkers who pointed out that at some point all intelligent species energy needs will quickly surpass what they can safely and cost effectively gather form their plant (this is happening to us atm) A species will then have to choices of either off worlding energy gathering, stopping growth or dying off.

Yes, we have no contact except that... Ufos shut down US nuke missiles sites.. google Larry King CNN, UFOs shut down missile sites, uTube. And, www.theyfly.com for open ongoing, civilian et contact. Don't expect seti, nasa or govt to admit anything. If you want to believe we are alone, that's up to you.

Perhaps there need be no alien influence at all to the influence the stars light. Perhaps the stars themselves are living, intelligent and alive...communicating with each other via blinking. If you are out tonight, take a second (you will need to put your i-phone down for at least ten seconds :)...) and to gaze into the universe...don't focus on one star, kind of look into the distance with your peripheral vision and you might be able to see this coordinated blinking phenomena for yourself. Check it out!

Most of the comments here are from people who obviously have not persued the subject of ET or the Cosmos in general but they are quick to report to all how little they know. Any reasonable interest and study of the phenomena will assure students that it is actually unreasonable to think the universe is not teaming with life forms many like ourselves and already in full contact with governments and individuals deemed trustworthy.There is indisputable evidence of past contact and relations with ETs and now their craft are being videoed and photographed every day and you dont know about this??? Thankyou MSM... By the way they can raise and lower their frequencies and interact from a high level to us here on earth. They can monitor every waveform that emanates from the planet as well as access all of history in the Records here called the Akashic. Inasmuch as they are all powerful in ways we haven't yet imagined it is the height of ridiculous to think they are here to harm us. As we are related to many of them they are here to see us back home and to help in the transition to 5d from4 where were are presently.

That there has been a monsterous coverup of this is patently obvious. Within the next few weeks and months all conjecture on this expansive subject will get kick started into the stratosphere as we are finally aware of the truth of our creation. The representatives from the universal Brother/Sisterhood will mentor us back into full consciousness and introduce us to our space neighborhood.

Walkowicz should be recognized as a good person looking to make progress with the conundrum of "Do Aliens exist" field of study, the dreadful failure of the original SETI program notwithstanding. Unfortunately, to do the study you need money for equipment and/or rental of existing skyward observing installations and to pay the woman-man hours for time spent on the project, so this invariably leads to asking those with money-to-burn for some of it. Why is this an issue? Since Walkowicz has secured the funds, this means something critical to the success of all such projects that nobody ever talks about: the person in charge of the purse-strings has to fall-in-line with the government official point-of-view. Not only this, but Walkowicz's peers must support findings and the middle management, in this case the "John Templeton foundation" must also agree to her scientific findings. Governmental and money-lending bodies are not known for their liberal views, are they? Since Governments, Corporations and large institutions are not to be trusted to expose earth-shaking data, the kind of data that means, for example, that all science text-books have to be re-written exposing the official messages over the decades (now about 2 centuries?), that what our scientific, governmental and big-business organizations have been telling us about our Earth history, our solar system and interplanetary physics and the origins of our Galaxy is seeded with falsehoods, mistaken assumptions, enforced viewpoints of the day or anything that would upset the apple-carts of the "Western" Christian churches, European religious states or Eastern Religious organizations.All opinions of the public are not in line with scientific findings, this we know, but why is it that these alternative and challenging-to-the-official viewpoints not supported? Of course, this question implies that the reader is aware of how secrecy shapes the opinions of the common man from cultural and bureaucratic leadership. Let me put it this way: of those with money or high positions and their lavish and privileged life-styles, would they want to loose all of that to support a movement or a social program that would do away with their ways-and-means to break from the status quo? Would a government official ever admit to a lie. stealing public funds a reveal a better opposing candidate and step down from office? Do large corporations who rape the land and the local denizens of an area ever do right by it without massive exposure by the public and massive expenditure of funds for lawyers to deny it first?We all know the answer to these questions, but do we, on the other hand, still accept the pablum feed to us by our science fellows and pundits?What is this conundrum? How does an astronomer or planetary scientist find legitimacy, when they are in denial of the daily occurrence of UFO sightings? News and UFO-interested organizations from around the world have been reporting on the UFO phenomena for many, many years, they can't all be weather balloons! (famous U.S. Military excuse for the actual occurrence of a UFO crash in Roswell in the 50'ies). It's amazing the chutzpa that people like Walkowicz have all-the-while blissfully and gleefully going about avoiding the UFO elephant in the room.

I might be speaking the obvious here, but Morse code was an earthly creation. If other beings did create something, your chances of understanding it (and therefore deciding it is a coded message or not) seem to be farfetched.

flickering stars? What do you do, place a lens at a significant distance from it? This is crazy. How do you point the lens? It wouild seem to me, radio waves are the only way to communicate and we have scanned the heavens for decades and found nothing. And do you know why? Because there is nothing there.

How beautiful to think twinkle, twinkle is actually winking. I hope it's not a distress call though as we used to do with a mirror and sunlight.Still, while I do believe out planet is the prettiest girl around, can we be quite sure we're the ones being winked at?

The truth is slowly coming out now about this. The new film 'Sirius' will document many of these et contact sighting and events, and ultimately, disclosure will soon be made by global governments. Dr. Steven Greer and his team already have an Extra-Terrestrial Biological Entity that they are examining, and hopefully it will be in the upcoming film 'Sirius'. This is a great story by Time, and we can't wait for more news.

I agree. We are so self oriented, we assume alien life forms will be basically like us, only looking a little different. That they will commuicate with some sort of genrated sound like speach, that they will see like we do, manipulte radia waves as we do. The truth is they may be so alien that we dont even recognize them as life. Who says they have to be individuals, like life here? Maybe "they" are one gigantic organism coveing half thier planet. Maybe they "see" radio waves, and communicate through crystal structures. The possiblities are just endless. Thats why innovative thinking like this is importrant. Even if they diont find ET, good science will get done and useful data generated.

Another place to find hidden messages could be in the DNA of Earth's life. A coded message left in the four letters of the genetic code would remain until an intelligent species was able to look and thoughtful enough to do so.

I think that this is a great idea. I wish them all of the luck. The things you are looking for are not complicated, but very simplistic. For all of you haters do not ignore the things your brain does not have the capacity to understand.

There is probably all kinds of inter-galactic communication all around us and we just don't know how to find it. I'm betting there is some kind of neutrino communication going on this very second. Let me look into this and then I'll just need some money to continue. I'll start around the reefs in Hawaii, submerged, in a scuba suit.

@RonE.Thorpe Great read Thorpe! I has my suspicions, but not anymore. And to think that MSM has a way to eliminate everything that has to do with ET pictures and videos, unless you're talking about the people of Boston, NY and Los Angeles, they may all be ET's. Please, let me bleed my ignorance to you. They can monitor every waveform! How? After much research I've come to the conclusion the Earth is round, all the waveforms that "radiate" from the Earth go in many different directions. Even if the could harvest or monitor every waveform.. they'd have to be in a lot of places to make any sense of them. Plus, why would they, they are us?You've humored my entire office and now I've got to get back to work. We're curious to know what you'd like for Christmas?

The might have already found us with all the encounter claims and UFO reports! :-)

Seriously though, like most people (including me) you seem to not really grasp how large space is and how many stars there are. I mean we can see a number on paper without really being able to comprehend the vastness the number represents, even within just our own galaxy. This is hard to do within the limits of the human mind.

Look at it this way:

Assume every UFO and encounter claims are not alien related and have Earthly explanations (i.e. aliens have not found us as you mention)

Assume every single day we thoroughly study 1 star system around a star and learnt everything about that star system's planets including if anyone/anything lived there or not. At this time we do not have this ability - but lets say we get it in the next 100 years or so

With the lower boundary of 200 billion stars, it would take 547 million years to have studied every star in the Milky Way. This is a length of time that can be hard to rationalize.

Then consider that the Milky Way is an ordinary galaxy. There are at least 100 billion galaxies out there with many having many more stars than the Milky Way

Now imagine you are an astronomer on an alien planet in the Milky Way. How long would it take to find Earth. Maybe they just haven't found us yet. :-)

This is without even touching the difficulties of interstellar travel.

As for interstellar communications - wouldn't some form of quantum entanglement be a far more effective method to converse across parsecs? I know it is claimed no information can be transmitted this way, but eventually we will figure that problem out, if some super-secret program hasn't done so already.

While the signature of life on earth has been present for billions of years the signature of intelligent life has only been radiating into space for about 80 years. Atm another species would have to be with in 40ly of us in order to realize we were hear and have time to beam back a message to us.

@vstillwell - There is a vast technological gap between superluminal propulsion and sending living beings in ships powered by such, and being able to build a big star shade in the outer reaches of a star system. We could probably deploy a sun shade of suitable size with our technology today or the near future. But we are nowhere near any form of FTL (CERN neutrinos notwithstanding) :-)

@msteffes - We can tell an artificial EM signal from a natural one. I question however, if ET uses analog radio to communicate. Or even digital radio which we could not detect in any case. Once Earth goes fully digital we too will be "silent" except for anything we send out deliberately for ET.

If a civilization is still using radio, that would put them at approximately our level of technology if not a little behind. Any more advanced civilization would probably not use EM for any communications. Maybe quantum entanglement, lasers, gravity well manipulators, or things no one on Earth has even thought of yet.

@msteffes Not really, just a steady on off signal would give us reams of data about who ever was sending the signal. We would get an idea of the lower level of their tech, what method they used to send the info, were the sender was located etc. And thats just with a steady on/off.

@rodgerw Orbit a couple of trillion solar arrays. Once you get the 1st one built it would only take a few of our generations to build the rest. As more arrays get built you would have more energy available to power swarms of robotic builders.

@jimmoir83 Physics demands certain restrictions on some of the things you mentioned. There is only one electromagnetic spectrum. It's properties will dictate the senses that organisms can actually have. The abundance (or its lack) of certain elements above iron will restrict the chances of anything more exotic as part of an organism's basic biology.

So while the stuff of science fiction can and has become fact in the past, there are limits to what can and can't work. That means the possibilities, while vast, are not endless.

As for communications, there are certain constants in the universe - the periodic table being one - which can form a basis for language. Assuming the beings are advanced and intelligent enough to actually create what this gal is looking for, they'll realize that the EM spectrum of a star is limited, so if they're going to communicate, they have to work within those limitations - the simplest being on and off. Again, this is very basic stuff. When attempting to communicate with other beings, the less complicated it is in the message, the more likely it will be received and, possibly decoded.

As for communicating in the first place, one has to wonder why they'd even embark on what would have to be a centuries-long project with absolutely no way to tell if they communicated. The best they could hope for, given the light-speed limitations - is a simple "we are here" sign.

@MaviAda@RonE.Thorpe Google Akashic Record bro and go for it. Also Edgar Cayce who made many healings with his contacts and the Akashic Record which in the healings was used to go back to the begining of some miazms within a persons light body that attracted similar circumstance to a being through lifetimes till dealt with cerimoniously. A little physical explanation. So you know this Galaxy is apparently 100,000 light years across, right. So the birth of Christ was around 2000 years ago and so for 2 thousand years those very distinctual waveforms with every nuance have moved outward and have only traversed 2000 light years. Thats not far in this enormous starwheel. Even our science has the tools for time travel but the higher 4th and 5th dimensional civilizations utilize time displacement as a matter of course. Outside our dual polarized dimension there is unity consciousness that leaves no shadow areas. All is one and it is all connected. It is possible to read these waves from different areas in space and adepts do it, spiritualy opened people and our black opps special forces have capabilities whistleblowers have talked about. Once humans have no restrictions on their abilities researching history becomes a super immersive experience that includes color, sound, scents and even the original emotions but this ability to review history like a 3d movie is utilized also in a teaching capacity to rearrange events creating different scenarios as a teaching tool using historical waveforms. Anyway for Christmas I would like to get back to my ship and out of this radiation zone, Cheers Kids;)

whole discussion is science fiction. universe vast (as you say). communication never faster than light (unless you want to kill Albert E.) therefore, communication may never be meaningfully achieved. odds of other intelligent life, very high. but how many, only god knows and she's not talking. second law of thermodynamics, machines break. we have been making cars for a 100 years and they still fall apart. so, a space ship traveling tens of thousands of years to reach us, most likely will not make it. radio spectrum communication, maybe?

bottom line...big area, maybe a few inhabitants with any smarts. communication, a long shot.